Archive for August, 2013

How Are Ballplayers Hoping to Gain an Edge in the Post-PED World of Tomorrow?

The recent Biogenesis suspensions levied by Major League Baseball are leaving many anti-aging clinics and other “sports wellness” organizations scrambling to come up with new kinds of performance enhancing substances and new methods by which to consume them.


Many players are hoping that Dino DNA Gumdrops™ will be an accessible, inexpensive source of powers.

An anonymous survey of players at the major and minor league levels was recently administered by the NotGraphs Investigative Reporting Investigation Team, the results of which (posted below) might inspire the leaders of the aforementioned clinics and organizations as they brainstorm new ways to tarnish America’s pastime.


Jesus Montero: Steroid Whipping Boy

Hmmm, that last one makes me hungry.

Is it possible to feel bad for Jesus Montero? Because I sort of feel bad for Jesus Montero.


More SABR Fallout: Gary Matthews Sr., Mad Hatter

Sarges Hats

One of the highlights of this year’s SABR conference was a spirited former player session with ex-Phillies Dickie Noles, Gary Matthews, and Brad Lidge. Noles regaled the crowd with his version of events from the 1980 playoffs and World Series, when he apparently was bound and determined to throw at every single hitter on the Astros and Royals who dared to stand in against him. Brad Lidge talked about being on the mound to close out the 2009 2008 World Series, and also the beginnings of his career.

Sarge, as he’s prone to do as one third of the26th ranked broadcast team in the Majors, rambled on extensively about how he doesn’t trust numbers, he trusts heart, and barely discussed his playing career. He did, however, provide the greatest revelation of the conference, as it was revealed that Gary Matthews is not just a former ballplayer. He’s not just a broadcaster. He’s not just the father of Gary Matthews Jr. He is all of these three, and he is also a hatter.

That’s right, Gary Matthews makes hats. Beautiful hats. All the hats you could ever want, if your head wasn’t shaped funny like mine, and therefore you looked ridiculous in a hat. Hats galore. He’s even starting a line of little fedoras for kids. Which will be adorable because kids in hats. His website boasts, “Along with his family and baseball, Sarge has a great love for stylish headwear. A quality hat always tops off his look and Sarge wanted to share his passion for headwear with his friends and fans. Creating a collection of his favorite styles, SargesHats.com is the on-line destination for classically styled and high quality hats and caps for men and women.”

Perhaps his meandering on television and in person are because he is still using the traditional mercurit nitrate for felting his hats, and prolonged exposure is driving him mad. That would explain a lot anyway. Well, as he slowly succumbs to mercury poisoning, he is leaving behind a fine legacy of headwear. Here now are the 10 best hats available for the discriminating gentleman to purchase today-right now, in fact-on SargesHats.com*: Read the rest of this entry »


Jurickson Shofar

juricksonshofar

Jurickson Shofar.


This Meatloaf Shall Suffer Adam Jones’s Godlike Hunger

Not so long ago, Adam Jones sounded his conch and let all know that something was about to happen …

As philosopher-kings and tribal warlords alike have told us via oral tradition, there is eating and then there is blood-flesh intake as sating ritual of conquest. So it is with Adam Jones.

If warrior-poet Adam Jones returns to base camp at one o’clock in the morning and announces that he shall smash the loaf of a hoofed beast, then the village elders and virgins shall prepare him what he wants.

Then he shall use his implement of war to eat the brick of entrails before him …

Conqueror and Meat

Do not eat. Rather, you should enter into a blood-pact with one’s food. Challenge one’s food to pick up crude tools and swing and thrust and stab at one another astride the glimmering embers of the campfire. The others look on, but they hold back owing to the primordial laws of combat. They dare not intercede.

The food is defeated, but only after the warrior-poet’s skin is peeled back and the nerves that snake through his organs are struck by hurled thunderbolts of a lesser god and then singed to the point of reckoning. Only then are ruins of the man reassembled to form a turret mightier than the one that nearly fell in the food-battle just completed.

When a remade man like Adam Jones looks up from his defeated and pacified platter, he gives off an odor that is at once a the smell of a pumice stone, the smell of ribbons of moonlight through forest canopy and the smell of a dead viking’s last sex act being devoured by gray wolves.

Know that it is because of Adam Jones and Eric Young Jr. before him that there is now a NotGraphs category called Regeneration-Through-Violence Food Consumption.


Ways Chris Carter Is and Is Not Like Pedro Cerano

cerano

This is the title of an empty note I made last night. I’m not sure why I wrote it, or what prompted it. I’m guessing a combination of Scotch whiskey and jet lag contributed, but I can’t quite put my finger on why I actually took the time to write it down, and what I thought I’d get from it. However, as small of a gift as it may be, I will not look it’s presenting horse in the mouth. The following are differences and similarities between Astros first baseman/outfielder/DH Chris Carter, and fictional baseball player Pedro Cerano.

(EDIT: Fine Internet User @KevinBassStache alerted me to the picture, which comes via CSN’s Julia Morales.)

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Who Hangs Up First?

Sandy Alderson accidentally butt-dials Rick Hahn while watching Glengarry Glen Ross at home. When he answers, Hahn overhears Alec Baldwin’s excellent “coffee is for closers” speech, which he’s always really liked. Who hangs up first?

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Matt Harvey: Awesome Pitcher, Probably Wouldn’t Be My Friend

Long, enjoyable Men’s Journal profile of Matt Harvey that makes me reasonably certain that, despite living in the same city, we will not be running into other.

This is not to say that Matt Harvey doesn’t seem like a decent enough guy, but, uh, I was on the math team in high school.

Harvey lives in a bachelor pad in the East Village, a downtown neighborhood known for its raucous bar scene, which he indulges in on occasion. “I’m young, I’m single,” he says. “I want to be in the mix.”

I live in a one-bedroom apartment with my wife in Midtown, a neighborhood not known for its raucous bar scene, or maybe it is but I’m not paying attention. I can’t remember the last time I was in a bar. It definitely wasn’t raucous.

With two hours until Harvey has to be at Citi Field in Queens, he decides he has time for some quick shopping. “Do you know the store John Varvatos?”…. Harvey eyes a linen blazer with about a million buttons running along the seam and a funky, upturned collar – a baroque garment more befitting a general in Napoleon’s army than a ballplayer. “Think I can pull this off?” he asks.

I think the last new piece of clothing I have is a polo shirt my wife bought me off the sale rack in Banana Republic, maybe a year ago. I did buy some new undershirts a few months ago. Does that count as shopping?

“Dirty martinis and music – that’s the big motto in our family,” he says, describing his extended Italian-American clan as a rowdy tribe, fond of letting loose as often as possible. “We get the booze going, and the music starts playing. Always old-school hip-hop. Jay-Z. Tribe Called Quest. The Pharcyde. My parents love that stuff.”

There’s half a bottle of red wine in the back of my refrigerator, and 7/8 of a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream. The wine has been there for an amount of time that can be measured in months, is surely well beyond undrinkable, and probably wasn’t all that drinkable in the first place, since we bought it for $4 at Trader Joe’s. But I really can’t tell the difference. The Bailey’s was a gift the last time we had a party. I used a few tablespoons of it to make ice cream, and can’t think of anything else to do with it. When I crank up the Pandora, there’s a pretty good chance James Taylor starts singing.

Harvey mostly hangs with finance and marketing guys in their twenties and thirties.

That sounds terrible.

Still an awesome pitcher though.


Transcript: A Baseball Writer and His Broker Discuss A-Rod

EJ

With regard to Carson Cistulli, a certain (and, for the moment, unnamed) Edward Jones representative knows two things — namely, that he (i.e. Carson Cistulli) is (a) not “cash rich” and also (b) a baseball writer of some kind.

With regard to the latter of those two points, the author presents here a lightly edited transcript of a recent phone conversation between himself and the aforementioned Edward Jones representative.

Author: Hello?

Broker: Carson, hi. It’s [name redacted] from Edward Jones.

Author: Oh, hello.

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An Experiment For Science! and SABR Food Power Rankings

rockysteak

Via common sense, that precious gift from our god and creator (David Appelman), we know that there is a limit to which any elite athlete can push his or her body. Often, that is an abstract concept, some theoretical level that we could never hope to attain, but that people like Mike Trout, Michael Phelps, and Michelle Kwan can approach.

Like most people with a name derived from the archangel Michael, I have finally reached that plateau. Over the past weekend, which I spent in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as a willing, nay enthusiastic, participant at the annual conference for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), I put myself to the test and touched the face of Appelman (note: I am speaking figuratively; in the strictest legal sense, I did not violate the restraining order).  Under the watchful eye and painful lash of my NotGraphs “editor,” Carson Cistulli, I made it my mission to discover if a man could live almost exclusively on Yuengling Lager and cheesesteaks for an entire SABR convention.

I arrived on Thursday morning, and stayed until Sunday morning, so I was limited to three lunches and three dinners. As such, I did strive to have what I thought would be the breakfast equivalent of a cheesesteak on both Friday  and Saturday mornings. Most of this came from the amazing Reading Terminal Market, which was located directly across from our hotel in the heart of the city. I can’t recommend this conglomeration of quick restaurants, fresh produce, meat, and seafood, bakeries, coffee bars, and assorted deliciousness enough. And since I’m told that Power Rankings are SEO gold, here are the official rankings of the food I ate over the course of three days: Read the rest of this entry »